Home

For me, although I love where I currently live, home is Idaho.

It's Fiesta Ole and Walkers off Broadway and the Greenbelt and 17th Street and Skyline and Pancheri Road and the Grand Tetons and the Snake River and the Rocky Mountains and my family and my friends.

It's not where I was born, but it's where I grew up and became me.  Living there has shaped who I am, how I see things, and how I react to things.  It's shaped my hobbies, talents, and likes and dislikes (expect country music...no thank you).

Tomorrow I am going home with my two babies and my husband (who also calls it home).  I am starting to feel this delicious curl of anticipation at my first glimpse of the mountains; my first breath of solid, clean mountain air; and my flood of memories waiting at each street corner.  I know this place somewhere deep inside me, no matter the 12 years I've not called it "home."

It makes me wonder where my sons' home will be.  Sentimentally, I would love for it to be Seoul, but the reality is there will be no memories lurking on the street corners for them when we return again, no senses reawakened.  I suspect home will live in their hearts here, in our large Midwest city.  And that's okay.  Seoul can be their history, or maybe one day even their physical home.  They can make new memories and it can grow in their hearts as it has grown in mine.

But just like home to me is eating a $0.99 soft bean burrito with no enchilada sauce with a side of ranch dressing from Fiesta Ole while staring up into the snow capped mountains instead of munching on a crisp apple while watching hydro-boats skim the tops of the Columbia River from my birthplace in Washington state, home to my boys might be a stuffed pizza and a poorly-played baseball game rather than kimchi and urban hiking. No matter where it is, going home is always a really special feeling.

Fiesta Ole.....yummmmmmm.

Family. Work. Sleep.

I've spent the last two weeks "hibernating."

In the last 7 days, I got promoted at work. Although this is a very cool thing, it also comes with a client and projects that need significant attention...like yesterday. I also flew across the country for a weekend. I hosted my family for a couple days and then turned around and started hosting my little sister. I attempted (and basically failed) to spend some quality time with my husband, as it has been nearly a month since we had a quality night to ourselves. I raised my kid and he's doing great.

So, by hibernating, I mean that I've drained my life down to the bare essential priorities lately.

Family. Work. Sleep.

I've barely uploaded (or taken) pictures of Little Bug this month. Blogging has been reduced to the barest minimum to preserve my family memories. Facebook is hit or miss. E-mail? What's that?

It's felt odd, but not nearly as odd as I expected it to feel. I don't FEEL disconnected or left out, I simply miss those people who I connect with through blogs and Facebook.

The people, not the medium.

The online community is here to stay in my life. I have made wonderful friendships and will continue to cultivate new ones that will enrich my life and my family's life. Am I going to throw that away? Not a chance. But, I've sort of enjoyed shutting the computer at night and curling up (in bed!) with a book. I've enjoyed turning away from my computer at work to proof a large project with only my iPod, and not Facebook notifications, as my companion. Yahoo? It's about to be a thing of the past.

I'm going to continue to find this balance that seems like it could really start working for me right now with some tweaking. Balancing what (or to be blunt, who and why) my online priorities with my basic life priorities.

Family. Work. Sleep.

Kimchi, putakhamnida

Last night Appa and I went to dinner at a local Korean place. Little Bug LOVES Korean food, as do we. We usually order some favorites, but this time we went for the all-you-can-eat barbecue. It's entirely too much food for our little family, but makes sense when you see Little Bug.

Because Little Bug packs . it . back.

It helps that he is cheered on by a small army of Korean waitresses who absolutely adore him, stroking his hair and clapping as he gives them silly smiles. He had no less than 5 women watching him as he single-handedly ate an entire dish of kimchi by himself, pausing occasionally to flash them a silly smile and say "yummmmm" in this ridiculous deep, right-from-the-belly voice.

They cooed when he pointed to me and said "omma" and pointed to his dad and said "appa." When he asked for "bop" (the Korean word for rice), they lost it. They brought me soup and showed me how to mix it with the rice and kimchi to make a dish traditionally served to small children...then they went ahead and worked on battle silverware and helped him eat it while Appa and I sat by and watched.

Here is the thing, normally a woman putting her hands all over my child, taking over and starting to actually feed my child, and just generally being all up in his business would take me over the edge in an unhappy way.

Instead she got a 30% tip and the promise that we will be back soon.

I can't give me son an authentic Korean home or even much of anything authentically Korean, but I am proud of the fact that he will grow up eating kimchi and calling rice "bop" and getting loved on by people whispering Korean in his ear. It is the very least I can do for him.

Our family loves stuffed pizza and brats and casseroles and potatoes, but we're also a family who loves kimchi and bee bim bop and jap chae and huo dduk.

I am super proud of my son for packing back the kimchi like a champ. That kid has one hell of a palate.

Why I am Obsessed With LMH and Other Justifications

In the last month I have found myself harboring a bit of an obsession with Korean dramas. On the expert recommendation of another adoptive mama, I started watching a very popular drama (subtitled, of course) and 25 hours over the span of 4 sick days later, I was hooked. I'm almost finished with my second one, have a list of dramas to chose from next, and am anxiously waiting (along with the rest of Korea) a new drama that will premiere next week....no idea when it will actually get subbed and put online for me though.

Appa thinks, among other things, that I am being a "poser;" essentially trying to like something Korean for the sake of it being Korean.

That is both true and untrue.

I've always loved foreign films; I own subtitled movies in Spanish and French. So in that respect, no, it's not out of the norm for me to enjoy this sort of thing.

However, would I have sought out dramas from other cultures on a whim in the first place? Probably not. I've got plenty of the OTH and LU and GG here to keep me entertained. I sought out Korean dramas because my son was born in Korea, and the dramas are a great way to see the minutia of his birth culture; the food, the slang, the way they hang out, the family dynamics. (Although I do understand that most families dynamics do not consist of ultra wealthy families with villainous mothers and sons who wear fur-trimmed trench coats and zip off for vacations on private jets with their perfectly permed hair, which is sort of a shame.)

The thing is, I might have sought the first one out because it was Korean, but now I am hooked because they are entertaining. I like hearing Korean and seeing all the different cultural nuances, but most importantly, I like the stories. Just like my American dramas, I am hooked on the characters and the plot. The way they use the lid of the pot to eat ramen or yelling "fighting" with fists raised when they are pumping someone up is not what keeps me up until the wee hours of the morning watching.....

As I watch more and more dramas, I'm starting to get to know some of the actors and actresses. I'm fans of some (like LMH) and not fans of others. I read some recap blogs that inadvertently provide valuable insight into what is reality and what is pretty outlandish and overdone in the dramas. I'm getting to know the different types of Korean shows and how they are cast, filmed, and viewed. It's opened up another facet of Korean culture I might never have known about.

How will this help my son? Oh, it probably won't. When Little Bug starts to learn about Korean culture, we probably won't lead with the shooting schedule of a 25 episode Korean drama.

This is all for me, and I won't even attempt to pretend this is for my son or for my exploration of Korean culture anymore. I'm just a fan girl who gets some side benefits out of her newest guilty pleasure.

But if Little Bug ever wants a hair style suggestion, I'm one click away from providing him with a most excellent and swoon-worthy hair style that looks great on a Korean man.....

How do you say 'Elmo' in Korean?

Last night I had a really interesting encounter. Little Bug and I ventured over to a bookstore that begins with a B to buy a book I had been anxiously waiting to be released. Within the last week, for some inexplicable reason, Little Bug has become fascinated with Elmo, so we ventured into the kid's section to see about an Elmo book. He was riding on my back in our Ergo baby carrier and chanting Elmo (ellllmaaa) over and over. It was cute.

After a couple minutes, a 30-something Korean woman approaches me, seemingly equal parts curious and distressed. She clearly was not a native English speaker, but could speak English.

Her: "Is he saying 'Omma'?"
Me: "No, he is saying 'Elmo'. He can say 'Omma', though."
Little Bug: "Ellllmaaaa, ellllmaaaa, elllllmaaaa"
Her: "Is he Korean?"
Me: "Yes. He was born in Korea."
Her: "'Omma' means mommy in Korean. He is saying 'Omma'."
Little Bug: "Elllmaaa, Elllmaa, Ommaaa." Dissolves into giggles before turning on the Little Bug charm.

At this point it is apparent to me that she can't discern between the two words Little Bug is saying (they are close to the untrained ear), and she thinks that he is calling for Omma and not being understood. She wasn't being mean; she truly seemed a little disconcerted by the whole thing. I decide to avoid trying to argue that he is saying "Elmo," even though I am proud that he is saying it, and go with her assumption that he is saying "Omma," because at this point, he is repeating Omma every time he hears her or me say it.

Me: "Yes, he calls me 'Omma' and he calls his dad 'Appa'. He can also say 'anyeong' and recognizes some other Korean words, too. We try to speak what little Korean we know to him on a regular basis."

She seemed genuinely surprised by this, but mollified in some way. She asked if he was adopted, how old he way, how big he was, etc. She touched him a lot, which normally would bother me, but I understand it is common in Korean culture, so I didn't worry about it.

Her: "He is still Korean, you know."
Me: "Yes, he will always be Korean. It is part of who he is."

She started asking a lot of personal questions like whether I worked, who he stayed with during the day, whether or not I cooked, if he saw Appa a lot, etc. I answered them all because it was clear that she was now genuinely interested in meeting an American woman who was raising a Korean son with the intent to try to preserve some of that heritage. In her broken English and my butchered Korean, we talked Korean food, Korean culture, Korean customs, etc. It was an enjoyable conversation with just a few comedic translation problems.

Her: "What is his Korean name?"
Me: "XXX YYYY."
Her:" XXX YYYY or XXX YYYYZZ?"
Me: Not able to tell the difference at all in what she is saying. "XXX YYYY."
Her:" XXX YYYY or XXX YYYYZZ?"
Me: Not still not able to tell the difference at all in what she is saying. "XXX YYYY. X-X-X Y-Y-Y-Y"
Her: "XXX YYYY."
Me: Not still not able to tell the difference at all in what she is saying. "Yes."

Finally, after about 10 minutes later, it was time for me to head out to get Little Bug home.

Her: "He's a lucky boy."
Me: "We are the lucky ones."

I'm not sure why this conversation struck me. Maybe it was because it was interesting to see what Korean people (we live in a very Korean-populated area) might be secretly wondering when they see us together. Maybe it was connecting with someone from Little Bug's birth culture and getting a chance to really talk about it again with someone. Maybe it was just a nice chat mother-to-mother. Maybe it was the seal of approval I got from this Korean woman, a seal I don't need but would love to have.

Maybe it was just the reminder as I drove my delighted son home with his new Elmo book that our family is deliciously layered and have irrevocably bound ourselves to another culture and have and will be enriched by that connection in the most unlikely of places.

A kid is a kid is a kid

Every kid is different. My kid happens to be Korean, American, jovial, an adoptee, a banana lover, dark haired, medium skinned, dark eyed, tall, hypotonic, hard working, stubborn, loving, and loved beyond measure.

Despite all this...he is just a kid. Just like I was; just like every other kid is.

I think sometimes we (especially parents who have transracially adopted) tend to focus on our children's unique aspects to the point of obsession. Although that is important (VERY important in some cases), at some point you just have to say...my kid is just a kid.

Going out of your way to find ways that your child is different from you or others around you will eventually ingrain in your child that he or she is different from others in fundamental ways...and that is not the case.

Celebrate what is unique about your child and his or her life. Don't dwell on what is different.

Little Bug has 10 fingers, 10 toes, 2 ears, 2 eyes, 1 mouth, and one heart....just like everyone else. That should be celebrated too, right?